Thursday, August 12, 2010

10 Celebrity Exhumations

I hope the other nine are more accurate than the one on Stonewall Jackson's arm. Back in the 1980s when I toured most of the VA, PA and Maryland battlefields, I visited the cemetery and viewed the marker for the arm. There are no Jackson family members in that cemetery. Jackson's Chaplin Beverly Lacy retrieved the arm and buried it at the plantation then owned by his brother. It was not then an easy site to visit but I was on a tour guided by Ed Bearrs, then chief historian of the National Park Service.

I live in Lexington, VA where the rest of Stonewall is buried. His grave is at the center of a plot surrounded by graves of his widow, his daughter and his two grandsons (who never knew their grandfather but both were career military men).

In life, Jackson was known to enjoy sucking on lemons during battles (and no one could figure out how he always managed to have them on hand). Virginia Military Institute students to this day visit the cemetery and leave lemons on the grave of the old VMI professor.

The arm has a more interesting history than recounted here. It was dug up in 1864 by Union troops and said to be reburied. A widely reported incident happened in 1921 when the US Army was conducting military exercises in the area. The legend is that General Smedley Butler had the arm dug up, then reburied in a metal box.

In 1998, the National Park Service decided to open the Elwood Plantation to visitors. Concerned that someone might attempt to make off with the arm, they were going to put in a concrete apron to protect it.

But first they had archeologists explore the site. There was no metal box and after exhaustive study of records, the Smedley Butler seems to be pure legend.

They also could find no evidence of a grave in the vicinity of the marker. It had been placed there in 1903 by a man named Smith but based on the other markers Smith installed at other sites, it was only intended to mark the general area, not the precise location.

So for what its worth, the National Park Service says it believes the arm is in the cemetery but the precise location "...is unknown and likely to remain unknown."

2 comments:

I hope the other nine are more accurate than the one on Stonewall Jackson's arm. Back in the 1980s when I toured most of the VA, PA and Maryland battlefields, I visited the cemetery and viewed the marker for the arm. There are no Jackson family members in that cemetery. Jackson's Chaplin Beverly Lacy retrieved the arm and buried it at the plantation then owned by his brother. It was not then an easy site to visit but I was on a tour guided by Ed Bearrs, then chief historian of the National Park Service.

I live in Lexington, VA where the rest of Stonewall is buried. His grave is at the center of a plot surrounded by graves of his widow, his daughter and his two grandsons (who never knew their grandfather but both were career military men).

In life, Jackson was known to enjoy sucking on lemons during battles (and no one could figure out how he always managed to have them on hand). Virginia Military Institute students to this day visit the cemetery and leave lemons on the grave of the old VMI professor.

The arm has a more interesting history than recounted here. It was dug up in 1864 by Union troops and said to be reburied. A widely reported incident happened in 1921 when the US Army was conducting military exercises in the area. The legend is that General Smedley Butler had the arm dug up, then reburied in a metal box.

In 1998, the National Park Service decided to open the Elwood Plantation to visitors. Concerned that someone might attempt to make off with the arm, they were going to put in a concrete apron to protect it.

But first they had archeologists explore the site. There was no metal box and after exhaustive study of records, the Smedley Butler seems to be pure legend.

They also could find no evidence of a grave in the vicinity of the marker. It had been placed there in 1903 by a man named Smith but based on the other markers Smith installed at other sites, it was only intended to mark the general area, not the precise location.

So for what its worth, the National Park Service says it believes the arm is in the cemetery but the precise location "...is unknown and likely to remain unknown."